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| Issue #10 September 2009 |
"Keep the Home Fires Burning" Written By David Golightly |
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PREVIOUSLY IN FANTASTIC FOUR:
Frankie Rayes, Nova, recently returned to Earth just in time to aid the FF in a fight against Ganix, an extraterrestrial on a quest to gun down former heralds of Galactus! Scott Lang and Machine Man were also able to intervene, giving the FF the upper hand. However, no sooner did they defeat the villain than the FF suddenly disappeared!
Unacceptable.
That was all he could think. The results of his attack on the Fantastic Four were simply unacceptable. His machine, remarkably designed, was perfect. There was no error on his part.
Doom paced in his private chambers, within his castle in the heart of Latveria. His servant droids had been banished from his sight, lest his frustration get the best of him. His green cloak had been removed, allowing his arms to swing without interruption as he paced back and forth in front of his throne.
He didn’t bother reviewing the schematics for his machine. There was no need. Even the cursed Richards would acknowledge that it was perfect. Its purpose had been…interrupted? Transformed? Mutated?
Yes. An outside factor had come into play. It was the only explanation. Something, or someone, had interfered on his distanced and clandestine attack on his hated foes.
That was the only explanation. Doom was flawless. He would discover this third party and punish them. He would crush them without mercy for twisting his revenge into a method of escape for his enemies.
The Fantastic Four were gone, but soon, so very soon, Doom would fix someone else’s mistake and then exact his vengeance.
---- 4 ----
“I’d hate to sound incompetent,” Ant-Man said as he removed his silver bug-like helmet, “but I am totally clueless as to where to go from here.”
Nova, her flames now doused, looked over her shoulder at the recently found hero. Like him, she had been out in space and off-world for longer than was comfortable. No sooner has she come back than the alien Granix had decided to attack. Until Johnny Storm had contacted her, her life in space had been…uneventful. Earth, it seemed, always brought adventure into her life.
Back in the Baxter Building, with Granix just released into SHIELD custody, Nova simply nodded at Scott Lang. She was as worried as he was, and twice as unable to provide any assistance in finding out what had just happened to the vanishing Fantastic Four.
“While working with Dr. Richards,” Machine Man said, “I became quite accustomed to the Baxter Building’s internal networks. I am currently accessing the systems through this terminal to try and locate the origin of the teleporter used to carry away the Fantastic Four.”
“You’re sure it was a teleporter and not some type of energy attack?” Scott asked. He set his helmet down on the console and leaned over Machine Man. “Or it could have even been a mutant. I’ve met a few that had teleportation powers.”
“Since there was no physical damage to the area they were standing in,” Machine Man replied, “I doubt it was an attack. More than likely they were moved and not destroyed.”
Nova watched the automaton type furiously away at the panel as the laser screen flashed information by too fast for her to follow, let alone understand. She looked around Reed Richards’ lab, amazed at the technological gizmos it held on display. Half finished projects were strewn about the multiple work benches, any one of which that, for all she knew, could be used to track down the missing heroes.
She saw a containment cell with scorch marks on it, imagining Johnny held within and letting his powers run rampant. Some type of testing unit to measure his powers, she assumed.
Why had Johnny asked her to marry him? She knew he was feeling vulnerable, but marriage? Did she even believe in it?
“What happened?” a stern voice from across the room demanded.
Nova and Ant-Man turned to face the doorway, while Machine Man didn’t even blink. Standing nearly as tall as the door frame was the green-skinned She-Hulk, dressed in an expensive Italian suit. Her hands were on her hips, a sign of her irritation.
“Jennifer?” Scott said, confused as to her sudden presence.
“Where are they?” She-Hulk demanded as she stormed into the room. “Ben promised me, he promised, he wouldn’t be late.”
Nova and Ant-Man traded a glance. “Ben promised what?” Scott said.
“I’ll be late for court now!” she exclaimed. “Ben and Alicia left the kids with me this morning while Ben was on monitor duty. He promised me he would get them at noon. That was three hours ago!”
She stepped in front of them, fuming. She looked around the lab, as if searching for someone to yell at. Nova hadn’t worked with She-Hulk very much, but she knew that the green female was more than just a public hero: she was a top lawyer with a practice to maintain.
“Uh, Jennifer…” she said.
“Do not make excuses for that orange bag of rocks,” She-Hulk cut in. “This is the forth time he’s done this to me. And where are Reed and Sue? Why couldn’t they come to get their own kids?”
“Jennifer!” Scott interjected.
She paused, still breathing heavily. Scott closed his eyes and said, “They’re missing. We don’t know what happened to them. That’s why we’re here. Are the kids okay?”
She-Hulk opened her mouth but didn’t speak right away. As a lawyer, typically she kept her emotions in check and she chided herself for speaking the way she had. She closed her mouth, breathed deeply, and started over. This time she was in the room as a friend and hero, not a lawyer who was late to court.
“They’re fine. I put them upstairs with HERBIE. What can I do?”
“I’ve isolated all teleportation signals coming into and going out of the city at the time of the disappearance,” Machine Man said. “It is quite amazing. Over a hundred and twenty occurrences.”
“That’s a lot of people in New York teleporting,” Nova said.
“The Baxter Building monitors energy signatures constantly,” Machine Man continued. “I can narrow down that list to seven signals within a block of where we fought Granix.”
“Can we cross reference those seven with files on hand?” Scott asked.
“Assuredly.” Machine Man typed in the command and watched the screen. “Apparently it will take some time. Comparing complex interdimensional carrier signals is quite taxing on the system. Dr. Richards’ file are quite extensive, given the history he has with off-world technology.”
“What’s this you were looking at on the other screen?” Ant-Man inquired.
“Apparently files concerning the inventory of the Baxter Building were recently accessed just before we arrived back in the laboratory. I found that interesting, since the timestamp indicated that they were accessed after the Fantastic Four vanished.”
“Someone hacked into the Baxter Building?”
“Any clues at the scene?” She-Hulk asked.
Scott shook his head. “None. We didn’t alert SHIELD when they picked up our bad guy, either, so as not to alarm the public.”
“Or tip off our abductor that he or she had succeeded,” Machine Man said.
“I see,” She-Hulk said with a nod. “If SHIELD were to sweep the area with a team, it would be all over the news.”
“For now, we’ll cross out fingers,” Nova said. “Maybe we’ll get luck—”
BOOM!
The Baxter Building shook slightly. In the lab on the twentieth floor, where they were gathered, they barely felt the effects of the large explosion they had heard far below them. Alarms and alerts sounded all over the lab, while several holograms came to life in midair over the console, forming a three-dimensional blueprint of the building.
Sections at the base were ignited in red light, marking where an intrusion had occurred. Several blips moved through the bottom of the foundation and into the lower lowers of the Baxter Building.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Scott said as he grabbed his helmet. “Let’s move, people! I think our mystery villain is making an attack on us right now!”
---- 4 ----
“Commander! I think you should see this!”
The Kree soldier assigned to look after the fleet hovering just a few dozen light years away from Earth growled. As a born Kree warrior, he had trained his entire life to fight his hated enemy, the Skrulls. Instead of waging battle on the front lines, he had been told to sit and wait for any movement near the beloved Earth system. Whenever one of his subordinates told him that he needed to see something, it typically wasn’t very exciting.
The commander turned in his captain’s chair on the bridge of the flagship anyway. He had learned at a young age that a Kree does not brashly do anything. Calm, confident, in charge. That was how he led, even if it was a ridiculous assignment.
“What is it?” he said.
The lieutenant, instead of replying, held out a small palm-sized screen for the commander to look at. The display showed the holding cells in the central gut of the flagship, which were always empty except when he gave leave to his officers, who would take out the frustrations of their assignment on each other.
Instead of empty cells, however…
“Where did they come from?” the commander demanded as he jumped out of his chair. “Are we under attack from them?”
“No, sir!” the lieutenant replied. “Sir…I think that the experiment that Bartos was talking about…I think it worked.”
The commander smirked. Bartos, a low-level Kree technician that had been experimenting with the cosmic rays they had encountered while perched outside of Earth’s awareness, was laughably incompetent. His theories had been rejected by the Science Council, which was largely why he had been banished with the rest of the Kree on this mission.
However…here they were. The Fantastic Four. On his ship.
“Bring me Bartos,” the commander said.
---- 4 ----
The frictionless elevator that Reed Richards had invented slowed as it almost finished its decent into the bottom sublevel of the Baxter Building. Ant-Man, shrunk down to a mere two inches and riding atop a miniature air scooter, checked his gauntlets. The tinkering he had done with them would reinforce his bio-blasts…in theory. He hadn’t tested them yet.
Machine Man stood silently at the back of the car, his sensors homing in on the disturbance below them. It was almost creepy how little he talked, Scott realized. But he still trusted the android.
Her hair smoking, but her body not yet ignited, Nova stood with her legs bent slightly. She was ready to jump into the fight at a moment’s notice.
Beside her, She-Hulk, who had only had time to remove her suit jacket instead of change her clothes entirely, was flexing her fingers. One of her knuckles cracked and the noise was enough to startle him. He imagined that She-Hulk was probably just like her cousin: it wasn’t a good idea to get her angry.
“Be ready,” Scott said. “X-51 wasn’t able to get a video feed down here for a reason. Whoever just busted in knows how to handle the monitor systems. They may even be familiar with the Baxter Building.”
“I’m thinking Mole Man,” She-Hulk said. “Who else would attack from underground?”
Before anyone could respond, the doors slid open. The lights in the corridor were off, blanketing the floor in darkness. Machine Man illuminated his eye sockets, spilling light onto the walls wherever his head was pointed.
Ant-Man jetted toward the ceiling on his air scooter. It was easy to maneuver, and nimble, like a bug. He triggered the heat sensors on his own helmet, and the total blackness in his field of vision was replaced by infrared.
“I got nothing,” he called out. “Hallway looks clear.”
Nova fully ignited her body and carefully floated into the corridor. “Someone’s dug under the building, cracked the foundation, and turned off the monitors. How clear could it be?”
The red and yellow licks of her flame tickled the walls as she took the lead and floated down the hallway. The power cosmic that Galactus had instilled in her years ago still burned brightly, although holey different than the Human Torch’s flame.
The lowest subbasement of the Baxter Building was mostly used for storage. Large rooms essentially filled with confiscated items, obsolete equipment, and Johnny’s wrecked cars comprised most of the space. None of the doors, which were sealed, had been opened.
“Got to be the Mole Man,” She-Hulk murmured as she carefully followed the others down the corridor.
A large, gray fist reached out from the darkness and closed around her head. She tried to screech in surprise, but the bulky fingers clasped around her were too suffocating.
She was wrenched back into the shadows before being tossed into Machine Man. The android was bowled over easily and the two heroes tumbled over each other until they hit the wall.
Ant-Man whirled around on his air scooter, facing the unknown attacker. Nova shot a stream of fire into the darkness, striking the enemy in his chest. A singed bit of skin was all the attack had to show for it, even though that very flame had taken down the likes of Drax the Detroyer.
Out of the still shadows stepped their attacker, a huge gray brute with a solid block in place of a head. Its bulging muscles were constantly flexed, as if it were ready to strike without provocation.
“Oh my God,” Ant-Man said. “It’s not the Mole Man we’re dealing with here.”
The large attacker lunged forward, leaping straight for Nova. She flung herself back through the air, easily evading the clumsy attempt to capture her. Her prowess in the air had only grown over the years and she would not easily be taken by a slow-moving and ground-laden creature.
Bolts of plasma discharge splashed over the monster’s block-like head, causing it to stumble back. The tips of Machine Man’s fingers had opened up, revealing ten individual muzzles from which he could displace his fire. Kneeling where She-Hulk had tumbled into him, the artificial man stood back up and continued his assault, peppering the attacker with hot plasmatic energy.
“Are you okay?” Ant-Man said as he swooped down to She-Hulk.
The green female shook her head, clearing away the cobwebs. “Just dandy,” she replied. “Any idea what the hell just decided to play pinball with me?”
“I am afraid that Scott was correct,” Machine Man said, never ceasing his suppression fire. “The presence of this Awesome Android depicts are hidden foe to be someone other than the Mole Man.”
“Android?” Nova asked. “Wait, I recognize that thing!”
“Crap,” She-Hulk said. “I do, too.”
She charged passed Machine Man, who let up his suppression fire as soon as she was in the line of fire. She used the momentum she built running down the corridor to add to her punch, landing a right haymaker against the side of the Awesome Android’s ‘head.’ The automaton stumbled back, allowing her to land another blow with her left fist, this time dislodging the block-like construct from the Android’s shoulders.
Ant-Man came in closer to the brawl, aiming his gauntlets carefully. “Get back!” he yelled, just as he unleashed his bio-blasts.
The yellow energy crept into the crack at the base of the Android’s neck, seeping into its internal circuitry. It spasmed, raised its arms, and fell over ‘face’ forward. Ant-Man swept over it, making sure it was down for the count.
“Nothing quite like a field test,” he muttered, looking at his gauntlets.
“Guys, this is bad news,” She-Hulk said.
“If the Awesome Android is here…” Nova began.
“Then the Mad Thinker logically is our perpetrator,” Machine Man finished.
The lights in the corridor flashed on, temporarily blinding the four heroes. X-51 was the first to have his sight return to him by refocusing his optic lenses, and upon seeing what surrounded them, he extended his retractable arms around the group for protection.
Five more Awesome Androids completely surrounded the heroes, all with tense muscles ready to strike.
“ –zz- urpised?” the static-filled intercom overhead said. “I imagine you would be, just as I was when the Baxter Building monitors told me it was you four coming to intervene as opposed to the actual Fantastic Fo –zz- No matter. I now have control of the entire building.”
“It’s the Mad Thinker,” Ant-Man said. “This is not good.”
“My brain is direct –zz- connected into the Baxter Building’s mainframe through the databanks located associated with the antenna array. The knowledge of Reed Richards is finally mine! However, you four will never see what I plan to do with that knowledge, as my Androids will see to your death.”
“He had his Androids shake the foundation as a distraction,” She-Hulk said as she eyed up the tense enemies around her.
“Keeping us from noticing that he was hacking into the array,” Machine Man added. “Interesting.”
“Well, where’s the array?” Nova asked. “We’ll just go shut it off.”
“It’s all the way up on the roof,” Ant-Man answered.
“Correct!” the intercom interjected. “And even if you manage to escape my –zz- Androids, you will never survive the security systems of the Baxter Building that are now under my control!”
---- 4 ----
NEXT ISSUE: Nova, Machine Man, She-Hulk, and Ant-Man battle for their lives! The Mad Thinker control their fates as well as the Baxter Building, but what is he after? And is he as guilty as our heroes believe him to be?
